INSIDE OUT

My Love/Hate relationship with this diet continues. We are now on Day 11.

Going from vegan to SCD was torture in the beginning for us. I felt like our house reeked of the true stench of a butcher shop. We became vegan for health reasons. I do care about the dear animals, mind you. Which is why we eat local and organic when we DO buy meat. Organic meat is the better choice for SOOO many reasons. But, I'll save that for another meat-eating post. Our grocery bills are through the roof. Ugh. Eating organic vegan is SOOOO much cheaper!!!

There is some investigation on how to do this diet for vegans. I certainly wouldn't try it for my small kids. The purpose of the SCD, however, is temporary. It is meant to "heal" the gut in order that the many functions of the intestine can deal with the food that gets put in it. I can deal with "temporary"... even though it could potentially be a LONG temporary, depending on the positive results.

I will be updating here periodically. I'm needing to keep track of our journey and this is one way to kill two birds with one stone (no pun intended).

In short, today is proving absolutely amazing results. If you were to have had a conversation last week with S and come to my home today, you would see a different child. He speaks more clearly, he is more grounded, and more and more, he seems to just "get it". Today, for the first time, even B made a statement of, "he just seems... 'normal'!?

Also, his eyes are not dilated!!! I'm sure, with SCD, this will have its ups and downs in the beginning, as I introduce new foods to him. Yet, today sent me through the ROOF with confirmation that we are doing the right thing for S!!

One example of something else different I'm seeing:
S was NEVER one to talk when he went to sleep. If he wasn't tired, he would simply lay there, quietly. His eyes would be open. Yet, he would never push his limits or even try (well, perhaps when he was 1). ;)

Last night, for the first time in his 5 years of life (I do have a bad memory but, the point is that this is VERY rare) ;) I heard my son talking with his younger brother AFTER I put him to bed!? The lights were off and I could hear an unfamiliar sound coming from down the hall.

I needed to hear more closely.

I quietly tiptoed to the edge of the hall way and listened. It was then I realized that my 5 yr old son, was having a 'conversation' with his younger brother before finally falling asleep!

My heart melted and tears came to my eyes, as they are now writing this. Understand something. To any other mother, to any other child, this might seem trivial and certainly not a "sign" of anything. To us though, it is more than just a 'conversation with one's younger brother". To us... it represented something FAR more deeper than those of you, who may not have a recovering son, could imagine. For my son, it represents the beginning of a different and perhaps much more deeper relationship with a brother, in which he might otherwise not have known.

I know we will (and already do now when we see progress like this) look back on this and forget how hard these past six months, since his diagnosis, has been. I am truly grateful to those parents who have not given up on their kids. Those parents who do not stay complacent when they see something wrong and who fight for their children's future. All the fighting they've done are now helping those of us in similar situations. They had it far more harder than some of us fighting now have. We have them as examples. I am deeply thankful.

DIE OFF SYMPTOMS

This was the absolute worst part of this nutritive regime I placed my children on. I expected, hoped actually, that I would see these symptoms. I never thought in my wildest imagination I would see what I did from my children. It was actually scary for me. If it hadn't been from the MANY testimonies of parents, who went through the same ordeal, I would have given up.

Some of the die off symptoms I expected in S, I also expected in J. Yet, I did NOT expect them the way I saw in N. She surprised me the most.

I suppose I should have known. N is MUCH like S. She looks like him, acts like he did at her age, even had some of his cute little quirks. I sometimes wondered if N would go down the same path as her older brother. Well, whether she will go down this path or not (this is the age I started noticing more signs of ASD in S), I did wonder if she might have been intolerant of some of the same foods or be predisposed to having 'gut' issues.

So here are a list of the die off symptoms in each of my kids.

S's Die Off Symptoms

-Headache
-strange rashes (S has tiny red pin dots around the sides of his mouth and at one point had a lacy like rash on his upper arms and hip area).
-knee pain
-ankle pain
-leg pain (S explained that it hurt from his knee, down)
-itchiness on back of head and other parts of his body
-limbs feeling "strange" - as described by him
-back pain
-irritability (over things that would never have caused him to be upset)
-"mean"ness (SO not like S)
-constipation

J's Die Off Symptoms

To be honest, I don't feel that J had any. He had lethargy and irritibility. Yet, he also went through that when we realized we had to be more strict with him on the gluten diet. He might have been having die off symptoms or withdrawls. Either way, he had the least of all symptoms.

N's Die Off Symptoms

The week before starting the SCD, I had introduced red meat for the first time with N. She is my vegan baby. If she's had meat it was the rare occasion, offered to her a few times outside of our home. I do not believe what she experienced was die off in that week. I thought I would mention it for research sake though: After twelve hours of having five little meatballs, N vomited the next morning and slept for half the day. By afternoon, she was running around like nothing happened. I am unsure if this was due to the fast introduction of red meat and the insufficient enzymes needed to digest the meatballs or if it was might have been a 24-hour flu bug going around.

Here are the die off symptoms I KNOW she had.
- Leg pain (I've never heard her complain of leg pain before - she was the first to tell me so I know she didn't get this idea from S)
-Irritability (more-so) Ha!
-Extreme hunger (she is normally hungry a lot - this was a different type of desperation, however. For a small child, eating more fat and protein in the same meal she's ever had, I would certainly assume she was definitely not hungry. Case in point, She would eat a WHOLE chicken breast, a WHOLE avocado, and three bowls of spinach in one sitting and cry from hunger in mere minutes. She's three and barely thirty pounds!? I am eating the same things she is most of the time and she DEFINITELY out-eats me under the table! She should not be SO hungry that she should cry about it).
-Lethargy (She slept for another whole morning after 24 hours on SCD)

Some of the limb pain in both S and N went away and came back a few days later and have now disappeared again.

WHY THE DIE OFF SYMPTOMS?

My suspicions, which I've suspected for a long time, are that these die off symptoms are due to, in part, a yeast overgrowth. The rest are from pathogenic bacteria.

I think of the bacteria and yeasts as tiny balloons in the intestine. These balloons are filled with toxicity. When the bacteria/yeast (balloons) die, the balloons rupture and the toxins inside the balloon are released into the body. The result is called "die off" effect. This effect is well known in the medical community. The joint pains, two of the three kids are experiencing, are suspected to be yeast in the joints.

Well, this is Day 11. I'm expecting life to get so much simpler from here on out. *knock on wood* ;)